It's easy to see how low level theory supports practical development, but perhaps it is less obvious as you approach grade 4 and go on towards grades 6-8. Perhaps the reason is that nobody has actually joined the dots for me on HOW it helps - I can identify various types of cadences and pivot chords and modulations, but it doesn't get me anywhere with my practical performance that I was not already going when I didn't know the names of those things. Similarly all that stuff with learning about composers' histories. I'm sure it would be more interesting and relevant to know which country a composer was born in, where he spent his life and why he wrote that piece if I had some idea WHY it matters. To me, the fact that this quartet was written in Germany makes not a bit of difference compared to one which comes out of Italy because I have no idea why it matters. The period is useful information, but that's usually so obvious from the music that interpreting it with reference to the period is not something I think about, I don't know most of my composers' dates, but I do know how to play their music - how helpful are the dates provided you can relate them to each other and the history of the instrument and general music development?

It used to drive me barking mad to sit through the A level lessons on Sonata form and As and Bs and recapitulations and whether something is a true fugue or a proper rondo, etc. It all seemed a somewhat mechanical way of pulling apart something beautiful and enjoyable and turning it into something complex and full of rules, which had to be attacked with a pencil. Composition rules seemed particularly weird, and probably still do. There isn't exactly a "right" way of making music, from a child's little ditty to a multi-tonal symphony they are all valid.

Is there something I can read about how the piece fit together? Just now it feels like I've got a jigsaw puzzle with theory here and music history there and musical form over there and music practical there, and it doesn't go together. I wish I cared about some of this stuff, but I find it utterly dull and turgid to learn, and I'd have to be tied down and forced to read programme notes, never mind write them!

you poor thing! it sounds ghastly.

How about taking a break from it and reading something higher quality? How about reading, or re-reading, The Classical Style or something like that, where the close textual readings and theoretical language actually have a purpose, because Rosen uses them to show what makes Mozart, Haydn and Beethover so great.

I played in a "playalong to Mozart's 40th symphony" orchestra the other week and was able to use what I'd learnt from Rosen to explain to my partner why the second movement was not "dull and ######" as she said, but rather a sort of musical palate-cleanser...... so it was useful in a funny sort of way.

For me, there's a wider picture too, that of national identities, and national ways of thinking and behaving, which is where the German/French/Italian etc differences come in. I tend to focus on one era more than on others, and have got used to the idea that French baroque music tends to be somewhat formally defined on the page - ornamentation is indicated, is rather tightly expressed and very detailed. It makes me think of French courtiers with frilly lace at their cuffs, being a bit snooty and formal, and very much bound up by etiquette: I also think of the earliest ballet dancing, which started up as a very masculine form of dance, again as entertainment for the French court, and of dance more generally, since it was a time when suites of dances were very commonly composed.

I'd compare that with Italian baroque music, where the ornamentation feels much more freely-flowing, taking huge risks and liberties with the score, and it makes me think of hot-headed and emotionally very expressive Italians from that time. Thus we have composers like Vivaldi, the red-headed priest who managed never to say mass by dint of having asthma, and seemed somehow to get mixed up with all sorts of near-scandal...but also the far more formal Corelli, who managed to combine that emotional freedom of expression with some of the most highly honed works of his day - it took years and years for him finally to accept publication of his opus V violin sonatas, for instance, and the virtuoso ones in that set are both marvellously polished, and very Italianate all at the same time....


....I don't think I'm explaining it all that well. I'm trying to say that knowing some of the origins of music also helps us to understand something of national characteristics - listening to Russian romantic music is such a different experience from listening to German romantic music, but the music of one single era also varies a lot across the map .

The other stuff - form and all that, some of it becomes more interesting slowly the more music one plays. Cadences would be more interesting to me if I were composing, at a guess, or improvising much, but are very much more academic for me, and yes, I did go over them all in order to survive grades 7 and 8 aural tests, but beyond that I've not all that much cause to know about them. A keyboard player accompanying me would, however, benefit massively from knowing much more than I do, especially if playing from figured bass. I guess they have a catch-all policy on this one - by no means all musicians need to know all the material, but many will need some of it, some of the time, so let's teach as much as possible. I remain to be convinced .

I don't know whether theory makes *everyone* a better musician, but I think it has made me a better musician.

Because I am a swot, I find memorisation much easier when I have "names" to attach to the different musical bits. That's where I find cadences and modulations handy. I can name them, therefore I can remember them "in shorthand". I find that my playing (note, *my* playing, please don't interpret this as any sort of memorisation-good-music-bad thing) is much better when i memorise, and I find turning pages annoying, so I try to memorise as much as possible.

Also because I am a swot, I like knowing the back-story to pieces. I think I remember that the Brandenburg Concertos (concerti?) were written as a sort of "CV" because Bach was trying to get a job somewhere (it didn't work). It makes me enjoy listening, and enjoy playing pieces, because then I wonder things like - is that why they were written for so many different combinations of instruments? etc.

However even though I am a swot... I am not a fan of overanalysis. I don't really like the sort of analysis that you describe whether it's dissected and found to be a true fugue or a proper rondo. I find it utterly pointless.

From a much simpler point of view, one of my sightsinging pupils has improved no end (just taken G6 singing) after her G5 theory....I only have to point out (when she's struggling) that note is the dominant or tonic, or that's a perfect cadence etc and she pitches perfectly. She has realised how much it is helping her too
Happy to say she is continuing on to G6/7 theory with me in September

Two issues here: theory and analysis. They can't be completely separated but analysis tends to look at genres of form: Sonata form; Rondo, fugue, canon, minuet (that tends to follow a specific formula in Classical form).

As for theory, I sometimes think it is treated arbitrarily by ABRSM and, too, have wondered what purpose it serves.

One way it helped me was in sight reading, another was transcribing arrangements unavailable in sheet music. With both you get to "know" what happens, making things a lot easier. Yet another was as a composer. Some understanding of the harmonic and contrapuntal structure helps composers control what they are doing. Things like modulation to remote keys and chromatic harmony become easier, neater and in good taste.

It's a double edge though. Too much involvement with theory can strangle the creative side of composition. a composer being too concerned with rules.

It's a big subject.

Your other point about composer histories, it probably doesn't matter too much until you get more deeply involved with analysis / musicology. It can surely help appreciation of music and assist in understanding why musical things happened the way they did, how and why certain composers developed or chose a particular style. Again there's a danger of dwelling too much on analysis. Pull a composer's work to pieces and its enchantment goes, for me anyway.



Maybe best to enjoy performance for now and as (or if) your curiosity about composers or styles grows these issues will take on purpose. I doubt there is a book dealing with your concerns completely - and if there was, would it make a difference?

Good luck with your explorations, anyway!

I think there is an analytical theory called "tension-relaxation theory" of something like that, where you consider the psychological effect a piece of music has on the listener and how the composer has achieved that. I've never studied this, but if I had to choose one analytical method it would be this as it can include everything else (rhythm, form etc etc) and it really means something musicial, (unlike learning that "the recapitulation starts at bar 256" yawn yawn!)